A Lake District town council has found itself at the centre of a public toilet backlash.
People are charged 50p a time to use the Rayrigg Meadow car park toilets in Bowness – but one crafty user placed a stick in the door so the next person did not have to pay and posted their cheat on social media platform Reddit.
It went viral – over 25,000 people upvoted the post, 930 people commented and 5,700 people shared it.
But Windermere and Bowness Town Council defended the charge and said there had been ongoing issues with people propping open the door.
It said it cost over £100,000 a year to run and maintain the toilets – which are cleaned several times daily, 364 days of the year.
The water bill for the council’s busiest toilets on Bowness Bay is £500 a month, it said, and thousands of pounds a year were also spent on drain unblocking when users tried to flush ‘unsuitable’ items.
The user who shared the image in the r/CasualUK subreddit captioned the image: ‘The people versus 50p toilets’.
Several people said they agreed public toilets should have a fee in place to keep them maintained, but others argued the charge was too pricey and unnecessary.
Some commenters also said toilets should be paid for through tax and that it was a violation of ‘human rights’ to not be able to use a toilet for free.
But the town council said that without the fee in place, the toilets would have to be paid for by residents or closed altogether.
The town council added that as the toilets were predominantly used by tourists, it felt it was not appropriate for locals to be expected to pay for their upkeep.
This resulted in the idea for introducing pay-for-use toilets.
All the costs of maintaining the toilets and keeping on top of repairs are covered by the 50p charge – and some nearby parish councils have had to increase their charges to 60p to avoid running at a loss.
Any surplus from the toilets is ringfenced for future repairs or to made up for times when there are fewer visitors.
Town council clerk Sally Parkyn, added: “The ability to freely access a public toilet while on a day out in the Lake District is not included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“Using a toilet along with eating and drinking are human needs not human rights. Just because you need food or drink you can’t go into a café and take a sandwich without paying.
“This situation is the same, we are providing a service for which there is a charge. By not paying and encouraging others to avoid paying, it puts the service they clearly value enough to believe should be a human right at risk.
“If everyone uses the Rayrigg Meadow toilets without paying it will appear that the toilets are not well used as there will be no record of the visitor numbers. The cleaning costs will remain as high as always.
“Thus when the town council review the toilet contract when it comes to an end in 2027 they may well decided that there is no need to keep these toilets open because there are no recorded users.”
More funding for public toilets needed
When the toilets first opened, they were originally paid for through income from public car parks in the area.
But the council said the money now funds the demand for services such as social care and teaching assistants for children with special needs.
Without funding for the toilets in place, the former South Lakeland District Council made the decision to close all its public toilets.
There is no government requirement for councils to provide public toilets – but Windermere and Bowness Town Council said with such high visitor numbers, the lack of public toilets was unacceptable.
In response, the town council, with the support of the Bowness and Windermere Community Care Trust, then took over the running of the toilets to keep them open.
The trust took over the toilets on a long lease and became responsible for the cleaning and running of the toilets as well as the maintenance of the ageing buildings.
During the COVID-19 pandemic the trust became unable to continue to run all the public toilets in the area – so the council was handed management responsibilities at short notice.
After the council managed to reopen most of the toilets, a contactless system was put in place in a bid to make paying for the toilets safer for staff and the public.
The council added that having the contactless system in place allows it to calculate the number of toilet users and collect money safely as well as cut down on vandalism incidents.
It added that it also allows the council to monitor finances and help make sure the toilets remain viable.
Sally said: “The cost of running the toilets is roughly as much as everything else the town council spend on all other activities.
“Other than charging for the use of the toilets our only other way of generating an income is through the precept, a small additional charge which is included in council tax bills paid by residents of our parish.
“For the toilets to be free we would need to double the precept paid by every local resident and we can’t imagine there would be much enthusiasm about that.
“The town council is the only alternative to the toilets closing. There is no other source of funding to currently available to subsidise the toilets.
“So, people who choose to travel to the Lake District and need to use the public toilets can either pay the very small sum of 50p or risk that when they next visit there are no public toilets left.
“If people want to protest effectively against the situation where the volunteer councillors of town and parish councils are left having to charge the users to run this important public service, write to your candidates for MP and encourage them to commit to adequate funding for public toilets across the country.”
To pee or not to pee – the viral debate
People commenting on the Reddit post both strongly agreed or disagreed with paying a fee to use a public toilet.
One person against the fee said: “yep, stick it to the man” while another added “basic things that everybody benefits from should be funded by tax”.
Others added: “free clean toilets should always be a thing” and “you should never have to pay for a basic human right, ridiculous, rip the thing off the wall” and “as someone with IBS, the very concept of paying to use toilets is incredibly infuriating to me, public toilets is exactly the kind of thing our taxes should pay for.”
People also argued in favour of paying the fee, with one person saying: “I honestly don’t mind paying for a toilet if it’s clean. The stench in the free ones makes me want to barf. It’s one of life’s small luxuries I don’t mind paying for.”
Another person added: “I think there’s a difference between this example which is a small community run one where the proceeds go towards upkeep and cleaning. As opposed to a pay-for-use train station toilet, where they’re obviously just charging you for the convenience and not bothering to maintain and clean it.”
Some people were also on the fence, with one person saying: “I am both for, and against it. For: In theory, the money is used to better the quality and cleanliness of the toilet and utilities.
“Against: The money may not always go towards the toilet maintenance and will probably be as bad as if it were free. And having to pay to use a toilet is stupid. I would rather go find a bush.”
While pay-for-use toilets are common in the UK – public toilets are often free in other countries. Pay-for-use toilets were also banned in America in the 1970s.
